 Starring: Michael Moore, Charlton Heston
Director: Michael Moore
Year Of Release: 2002
Plot: Bowling For Columbine explores America’s fascination with firearms. Michael Moore travels around talking to people who are both pro and anti-guns, asking how the US got to the point where two boys would go into Columbine High School and shoot their classmates, and whether the easy availability of firearms and America’s gun culture made it more likely to happen. |
Although Michael Moore had been around for a long time before Bowling For Columbine, particularly with Roger & Me and his British TV show, TV Nation, it was for his 2003 anti-gun movie, Bowling For Columbine, that he became a household name. It was the first documentary for 46 year to be in competition at the Cannes Film Festival (they even invented a prize to give it), it won the Best Documentary Oscar and became the highest grossing non-fiction film in history (although it was later overtaken by Moore’s follow-up, Fahrenheit 9/11).
Bowling For Columbine is a fascinating movie, but is there actually any point to Michael Moore’s films? Particularly after his anti-gun movie his documentaries have basically been polemics, where he doesn’t so much argue a point of view, as rattle his way through a series of liberal right-on points, and then assume that he’s correct without actually giving all that much new evidence as to why. Instead of engaging with why people might feel differently to him, he tends to merely ridicule opposing viewpoints rather than argue against them, while using cheap and contrived stunts to promote his agenda (these in particular have started to get annoying, as while they were effective in Bowling For Columbine, his later stunts don’t actually try to effect a change or shed new light on anything, they merely attempt to make his targets look foolish, not because they are intrinsically wrong but because anyone in that situation would look ridiculous).
I tend to agree with Moore’s views about guns in Bowling For Columbine and medical care in Sicko, and so when I watch those movies the points he’s making seem right to me. However will these films speak to people to don’t already agree with Moore? I don’t know, but probably not, so what are they actually going to achieve? This is particularly true with Fahrenheit 9/11. Its success came because a lot of people already passionately hated George Bush, and so they went to watch it so that they could see opinions they’d already formed spelled out for them on the screen. Fair enough, but it is essentially meaningless. Would that movie actually change anyone’s opinion about anything? I severely doubt it, as it didn’t actually feature much in the way of argument or present any information that had been around for years before.
It just rehashed old information with Michael Moore being sarcastic and disingenuous about everything, and deliberately ignoring any information that didn’t fit with his viewpoint. For example, Moore spends a lot of time ridiculing George Bush for remaining sitting with a bunch of schoolkids after he first heard about 9/11. What the film doesn’t bother to mention is that according to US security protocols for national emergency situations, that’s exactly what he should have done until instructed to do otherwise by the Secret Service, who are in charge of his personal safety. However, rather than making salient points, Moore just uses it as a cheap way to bash Bush, despite the fact he knew full well why the President did what he did. There are an awful lot of things you can legitimately criticise W. for, but that isn’t one of them. You could say the protocols were wrong, but not the President, as Clinton or Obama would probably have done the same in that situation. For Moore to concentrate on it is cheap and
evidence of how little proper argument he bothers to engage with in the film.
In fact, would anyone have even bother to go to watch Fahrenheit 9/11 it they weren’t already marching to the beat of Michael Moore anti-Bush drum? I didn’t like George W., but I have to say that Moore’s film struck me as utterly redundant.
Following Bowling For Columbine, Moore’s films have become more and more pointless, as they’ve increasingly just started to preach to the quire. They don’t teach you much information you didn’t already know, explore new arguments or try to engage with people who don’t already agree with Moore’s point of view, so the result is that the only reason to watch them is so people who already have liberal values can feel right-on and have opinions they already hold confirmed. And quite frankly, what’s the point of that, as it achieves nothing?
It’s not as true of Bowling For Columbine, which is better researched and really tries to engage with its subject and find answers that go beyond the sarcasm and obviousness of his later movies. It is probably his only film that might change people’s minds, because while it does occasionally go off track so Moore can show off with his ‘I’m more liberal than you are’ credentials, most of the time it’s giving you information you didn’t know before and presenting a cleverly constructed argument on American gun culture.
After Columbine, Michael Moore seems to have started to believe his own hype, and so rather than arguing his case in his films, he merely just wanders round assuming he’s right and that everyone agrees with him, while engaging in cheap tricks and seeming smug. That’s not to mention the amount of misinformation he’s spread to promote his agenda while ignoring everything else. His movies have become highly political rants rather than documentaries with a point of view. The result is that a movie like Fahrenheit 9/11 might have made a lot of money, but it was essentially pointless. In fact its main achievement wasn’t to change anyone’s mind, but to make Moore even more convinced of his own genius than before.
Although it hasn’t reached the UK yet, his latest film, Capitalism: A Love Story, is much the same. Moore uses the recession to go round saying how bad the corporate world is. However as everyone’s been saying that for the last 18 months, what’s the point of him chipping in when he has nothing new to add? There isn’t one, but the timing is right for people who already agree with him to spend money on watching his rant, and make him even richer. So apparently capitalism is bad, unless it’s him cashing-in on the zeitgeist.
It’s a shame really, because if he could have made more movies like Bowling For Columbine, he might have become a force for change, instead of someone who merely makes films that are actually pretty meaningless rants that will only be watched by people who already agree with him and who’s probably knew everything he’s saying already. Maybe one day he’ll be able to leave his ego at the door, but until then his films are likely to remain fairly pointless.
TIM ISAAC
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